Google Goes Back to Its Roots - Local Small Business Marketing Feels the Effect

Content is king, long live content.  Google's intent has always been to organize the information man has created and continues to create.  In the information age, he who controls the primary commodity of the era is likely to have a lot of power.  And, clearly they do. 

During the course of the past year, Google has tightened and tightened its methods for separating the wheat from the chaff, and deciding what content is valuable and that which is not.  This has primarily effected the value of back link campaigns.  And there is no doubt that huge amounts of useless content was being piled onto the internet for the singular purpose of creating back link support for other websites. 

We at Randy Kirk and Assoc., try to maintain 100% white hat approaches to the internet, but I have to admit that I succombed to the siren song of cheap back links and paid the price.  However, in a rare twist, one of my clients seems to have been slapped more than any other, even though his website has massive original and useful content, and he has a ton of white hat back links.  http://www.mortgagehelplosangeles.com has been one of my most successful efforts.  While you can imaging hos hard it is to rank well for mortgage broker los Angeles, we had controlled the number one spot on Google Places for months, and were on page 1 of the Google Everything search with the website. 

Even in the month following the penguin change, our position remained dominant.  Then in the last week or so, the website dropped precipitously and we are flirting with number 3 or 4 on Google Places.  We did buy a few cheap back links, but not a lot.  The client has 40 YouTube videos up with very original content and a blog at http://mortgagelosangeles.blogspot.com/ that is active and has tons of original content.  Of course, both the videos and the blogs are pointing to the website. 

So, if you would like to show off your skills, take a look at the website, and see if you can find the missing piece of this puzzle.  Why do you think we got slapped?

Facebook Fans vs Google Places

What is a small business owner to do?  There are only so many hours in the day.  For today, the most important thing in advertising for small businesses is free, except for the time it takes to do it right.  Google Places (formerly Google Local Business Center) is one place where your visibility almost guarantees phone calls.   For a step-by-step guide as to how to set up your listing on Google Places and how to optimize that listing, check out my new blog How to Optimize Your Google Places Listing.

This writer believes that Facebook Fan Pages will rule the world.  They might someday, so take some time to read this entire article (2500 words.)  Here is an excerpt.

400 million people already are on it and Facebook accounts now for 1 in 4 pageviews that occur in the United States. That’s an order of magnitude larger than Google on both a traffic and unique visitor level. They’re doing something right to encourage people to create profiles on the site and also encourage repeat usage.
And the creation of a personal profile is really no different than creating a website– whether for yourself or your business.
All Facebook has to do is tell these 400 million people: “hey, want to create a page for your business in one easy step?”  No need to create a new account, as we already have your information.  It’s fast, free, and easy– plus, you already trust Facebook with most of your information already.  So why not?